I finally understand Willpower

[drspendlove]

So, playing on Hard difficulty, I'm finally to the difficulty threshold where I *have* to complete missions quickly because I will overheat and shutdown otherwise. The funny thing is that by completing the missions quickly, I get awfully close to shutdown due to my movement speed. Thus, I finally understand why having a high Willpower stat is extremely important. Yes, resistances are very nice to have. Yes, a few classes benefit from some extra grenade damage every now and then. But even without those two things, Willpower would still remain the number 1 or 2 most important stat to have points in to negate or at least reduce the DoT most of my templars have on them for 50%+ of any mission.

Oddly, demanding difficulty, despite having the only heating difference of 1 heat per turn, didn't necessitate high willpower or fast finishing speed. I think the number of spawns (and foe levels?) got just high enough that it became too difficult to take things slowly between demanding and hard.

Also, Toughness FTW. Fortitude is so much more important than just HP. Every class other than Scouts seem to need quite a lot here so they can negate a significant portion of damage.

[fallen]

I would suggest playing around with the Heat-line. You can tailor your movement to be more precise and less of a rush, and complete the levels without "racing to finish before complete shutdown". Its chess-like play, and may require you resisting easy things like coming out of OW to shoot an enemy and then going back into OW.

My #1 differs per Templar, so that is a tough poll.

[En1gma]

I raise Fortitude and Willpower over anything else. This is a viable tactic on the highest difficulties. My highest builds run Fort:Will 3:2, and I never have any issues.

Accuracy is better gained by Skills, HP and survival through Attributes imo

[Cory Trese]

The way it works out is essentially that BF contains a few sub-games, depending on difficulty.

Playing on max difficulty the game is completely different in feel than it is on the lower levels.

[drspendlove]

Yeah, there's definitely more flexibility on lower difficulties, which is common across almost every game. The poll is intentionally silly, and not to be taken too seriously.

[En1gma]

I think the argument can be made that Willpower is the most important Attribute behind Fortitude. (Keeping mind that this is a non-serious poll of course.)

Playing with greater and greater Heat levels will always result in greater and greater damage per turn to overheat damage. By Willpower acting as a buffer against that damage, you are able to operate far longer than you would if you were talking a dozen plus damage per turn from Shutdown level Heat damage.

Bear in mind that I only play on Brutal and up, so lower difficulties would be much more forgiving due to the faster rate of Heat dispersal and lower enemy damage thresholds.